W. Also I.P.

Our Last Summer on Pulpit Rock Road

Nights in that white house
We push our plates back after supper
And watch the sun set down behind Camden.

My father listens gravely for the ferry
To sound safe passage past the point.
You can feel the horn before you hear it - 

Low and imprecise as wind thrumming through rocks, 

Hollow as a gull's call in fog.

I watch the light die on Saddle, the saddest island, 

All spackled with mussels and timothy grass, with its two humps 

And back broke between.
Or I'll watch my sister's eyes darken with the water.

Tonight the slick heads of Harper's seals flash silver in the thoroughfare.
My family sits in spindle-backed chairs facing west,
Each with our own separate silence,
As the sun sets so wide, the light fills up the spaces between us.